John Thomas Edson was born in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 17 February 1928, son of John Thomas Edson senior and his wife Eliza Charlotte, née Gill. His father died in July the same year. He was educated at Hodthorpe Primary School and Shirebrook Selective Central School. He was a fan of movie serials as a child, which, encouraged by a teacher, he would analyse and rewrite. At eighteen years old in 1946 he joined the army, and served for 12 years as a dog trainer, while devouring pulp novels and watching adventure movies. He began writing while still in the army, and on his discharge worked as a postman and the owner of a fish and chip shop, while trying to make a living as a writer.
His earliest work included adventure strip serials for DC Thomson comics, including "Dan Hollick, Dog Handler" for The Victor, as well as strips for The Rover and The Hotspur, many of which were westerns. From 1965 on he wrote numerous western, detective and science fiction novels. He was hugely prolific in the 1970s. His writing became increasingly right-wing and homophobic in the 1980s, and he fell out of favour with British publishers. From the '90s his books were only published in America, where they were frequently reissued under new titles. All told he published 137 books and sold over 27 million copies around the world. He retired due to ill-health in 2005, and died on 17 July 2014.
References[]
- Alan Clark, Dictionary of British Comic Artists, Writers and Editors, The British Library, 1998, p. 54
